Good Design Never Grows Old

. Friday, May 7, 2010



Beautifully designed 1950's instruction manual for the Olivetti Lettera 22. 

"The Lettera 22 was the pinnacle of 1950s typewriters (MoMA even have one in their permanent collection), a true luxury item, and the manual testifies to this. The copy is peppered with proud sentiment, and includes gems like ‘The Olivetti Lettera 22 is quite clearly a portable typewriter of the most up-to-date design and fine workmanship’ and ‘A few minutes spent in reading this book will enable the novice and the experienced typist alike to get the very best out of this excellent typewriter’. It refers to itself as a book! You almost get the impression Olivetti decided to print a manual that people would actually want to keep and not throw away once they got used to their new typewriter. The whole thing could have been printed entirely in black, but pale greens, reds and turquoises pop up throughout, giving the manual a sense of luxury that elevates it from being just a utilitarian document."

Probably designed by either Max Huber or Giovanni Pintori.

Via designdig via wemadethis.

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